urn:taro:utexas.hrc.00007Kingsley Amis: An Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities
Research CenterBill StingoneUniversity of Texas at Austin1995Text converted and initial EAD tagging provided by Apex Data
Services,
September 2000.Finding aid written in EnglishTue Jul 22 15:07:54 CDT 2003urn:taro:utexas.hrc.00007 converted from EAD 1.0 to 2002 by v1to02.xsl (20030505).
Descriptive Summary
Amis,
Kingsley,1922-Kingsley Amis Collection
1933-1968TXRC95-A951.5 boxes (.75 linear
foot)Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center,
University of Texas at Austin English author Kingsley
Amis has published a diverse array of works ranging from poetry to novels to
literary criticism. The Amis collection contains juvenilia and draft materials
from ten of the seventeen books Amis published before 1968. The collection
offers extensive materials for examining Amis' methods of composition and
editing.English.
Biographical Sketch

Kingsley Amis (1922-) is the author of seventeen novels, three
collections of poetry, over twenty short stories, and ten books of social or
literary criticism. He was born in London to William Robert and Rosa Annie
Lucas Amis. He began school at Norbury College, then attended the City of
London School until 1941, when he received a scholarship to St. John's College,
Oxford. At St. John's Amis met Philip Larkin; both men were studying English
Literature and remained close friends throughout their lives.

In 1942 Amis was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Signal Corps.
He served in the British Army for three years in France, Belgium, and West
Germany. He returned to St. John's in 1945 and received his degree in 1947.
Despite the rejection of his research degree thesis

English Non-Dramatic Poetry, 1850-1900 and the
Victorian Reading Public, Amis was able to secure a post as lecturer in
English at University College at Swansea within a year. Amis remained at
Swansea for 12 years, then became a fulltime writer.

Since the beginning of his career in 1947 Amis has continued to write
and publish poetry and essays. His best known work, however, is his prose
fiction. In 1954 Amis published his first novel,

Lucky Jim, to great popular and critical
acclaim. The novel earned him the Somerset Maugham award for fiction and a
place in a group of young writers, which included Iris Murdoch and John
Osborne, whom the critics labeled Angry Young
Men.

While Amis made his reputation with the satiric fiction of his early
novels such as

Lucky Jim, That Uncertain Feeling (1956), and
Take a Girl Like You (1960), in his 48 year
career Amis has written over 40 books in a wide range of genres including
mysteries, ghost stories, science fiction, social commentaries, literary
studies, and memoirs.
Scope and Contents

The Kingsley Amis collection, 1933-1968, consists of typescript and
holograph drafts and notes for his works. The works in the collection are
arranged in chronological order, beginning with two unpublished works, an essay
book written by Amis at age 11 and his rejected B. Litt. Thesis (1947),
followed by material relating to ten of the seventeen books Amis published
between 1954 and 1968.

The collection contains material relating to Amis works in several
genres. Included are corrected typescripts of two of his satiric novels,

Lucky Jim (1954) and
One Fat Englishman (1963); two mysteries,
The Egyptologists (1965) and
The Anti-Death League (1966), and his James
Bond novel
Colonel Sun (1968). Each of these
manuscripts is accompanied by notes and outlines. Other Amis titles are
represented in the collection by notes and fragments. Among this material is a
notebook full of notes and outlines for
Take a Girl Like You (1960) and copious
notes, lists, and drafts from his two James Bond studies:
The James Bond Dossier (1956) and
The Book of Bond (1965).

The collection offers extensive material for examining Amis' method of
composition and editing: it reveals Amis' propensity for creating lists,
outlining scenes, and taking notes on whatever scrap of paper was at hand.
There is no material relating to his personal life. The collection contains
only one piece of correspondence: a note dated 29 September 1968, from Anthony
Hobson to Mrs. Kingsley Amis.